You know what they say about imitation

  • Developer: AM Factory, Eleven, Paon (it’s complicated)
  • Publisher: Eleven, Gavaking
  • Original Release Date: January 27th, 2000 (Mobygames says 2001 for Japan, but this isn’t corroborated anywhere else)
  • Available on: Arcade
  • Genres: 2D Platformer (single screen), Action

MAME is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? The now-25 years old emulation titan places nearly every arcade game at your fingertips and is such a valuable asset for anyone looking to experience an entire era of gaming or relive nostalgic favorites that aren’t offered through mainstream storefronts. I owe a lot to MAME over the years for fueling a longtime habit I’ve had of booting up random games over the weekend for a quick playthrough. Not all of these games end up being winners, but the experience is always educational, a window into a different time where different trends were in favor and developers had different priorities. Neo Geo stuff is something that I have less experience with than I’d like, having been a person who didn’t grow up near any arcades at the right time and wasn’t anywhere near wealthy enough to afford an AES, so Nightmare in the Dark here is an opportunity for me to get a bit more in touch with the MVS side of things. This isn’t a stone cold classic like SNK’s multitude of great fighting games or their other headliners like Metal Slug and Neo Turf Masters, but it’s a fun and breezy experience that I probably should have saved for October because of its horror theme. Oh well!

For the sake of brevity or ease of conversation (or if they’ve got a bone to pick), gamers tend to attribute most games and the design choices that comprise them to the developer in question in the broadest sense possible or even just a single person if they’re infamous enough to become an auteur. Ever seen or heard anybody who hates Kingdom Hearts talk about it? You’d think Tetsuya Nomura was John Wick or something based on the fear he strikes into them! It’s not exactly reasonable to expect everyone to research a game’s credits before saying anything about it, but I do think it’s important to try and highlight as many people on a game’s development staff as possible and verify whether or not it was a case of multiple teams working together. It’s unfortunately difficult if not impossible to find concrete information on most individuals and smaller developers that aren’t tied to landmark titles, but I try to do what I can even if that’s just a visit to Mobygames. I bring this all up because Nightmare in the Dark is an interesting case that can’t be attributed entirely to one developer.

AM Factory appears to be the team most directly involved with the game and it was progammer Hisanori Takeuchi’s final credit, but the game’s credits also feature staff from a company called Eleven and there’s also a single staff member from Paon on the game as well. Despite how it may look on the title screen, Gavaking, one of the game’s publishers, is actually a different entity and separate from Eleven (shout out to @mistydemeo on Twitter for bringing this information to my attention!). AM Factory and Eleven were both home to various individuals who left Kaneko, so some members of the team (such as director Akihiko Uto) have experience with games like Moujya and Air Buster too. Four Eleven staff members worked on the graphics for the game and three other members were in the “Special Thanks” section for reasons unknown. Looking at the graphics team for this game, Taketumi Watanabe seems to have only worked on this game and Masayuki Taguchi and Hiroshi Yokoyama don’t appear to be a part of the industry anymore either. They were credited on notable games like Armed Police Batrider and Super Star Soldier, but Tsuyoshi Yoneyama (not the professional golfer!) is cited as a pixel art designer on Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius. Considering that the graphics are probably the best thing about that game, that’s pretty good! I have to wonder if the Masayuki Taguchi credited here is the same artist responsible for the art in the manga called Battle Royale (which has a somewhat similar art style to Armed Police Batrider), though since there’s no concrete evidence of that anywhere, it’s just conjecture on my part.

There was only one Paon member involved under the label of “Data Convert”, which… Well, I’m honestly not sure what that’s for! According to GDRI, it may have been for sound data conversion, which still isn’t something I’m familiar with, but was likely important nonetheless. The Paon member in question, Tatsuya Watanabe, seems to have gone on to have quite an interesting career – he was credited as a producer on games like DK: King of Swing and Trapt, and if the results I found through searching Japanese Google are correct, he was apparently the president of Paon at one point too. Now that’s what you call range!

Nightmare in the Dark is part of a lineage of “single screen platformer” games made popular by hits like The Fairyland Story and Bubble Bobble. You could also call them “action” games since the platforming isn’t really the focus like in something like Super Mario Bros. and it’s more about managing enemy placement to arrange the best kills possible, but honestly, genre debates are never worth getting into, so just go with whatever feels right. These kinds of games were pretty popular in arcades in the 80s and early 90s, leading to the creation of new series like Snow Bros., causing established series like Joe & Mac to give it a shot, and spawning whatever the heck Ultra Balloon is supposed to be. Bubble Bobble still lives on, but most of its challengers died out when arcades did. Nightmare in the Dark is among the fallen, but as one of the few options to grace the Neo Geo MVS board, it still has a minor niche alongside games like Zupapa and Bang Bang Busters.

What little story there is in Nightmare in the Dark is both melancholic and kind of uplifting, a bit of a surprise in a game like this. You play as a gravekeeper who has intentionally isolated himself from society because of his appearance. Your tragic protagonist discovers that the graves they tend to have been ransacked for unknown but likely nefarious purposes and sets out to save the day with no expectations of gratitude. Your investigation takes you through 25 levels divided between 5 stages and a boss fight every 5th level. Since you’re fighting zombies, mummies, and ghosts, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, but when you defeat the wizard responsible for desecrating the graves and amassing an army of the undead, your character keeps his accomplishments to himself even though they’d make him respected amongst the villagers who once shunned him. Like the ending to a good fairy tale or Aesop fable, the villagers end up discovering his achievement of their own volition and thank him for his hard work. Thus, the lesson of this brief tale is a positive one, if a bit naive at times when applied to today’s world – do the right thing even if you don’t receive recognition for it and good tidings will eventually come your way. Not the kind of lesson I expected to learn from a game called Nightmare in the Dark!

In particular, this game is nearly identical to Snow Bros. in the way that it plays. If you’re unfamiliar with that game, it has you throwing snow at enemies in order to encase them in snowballs, which you can then use to defeat other enemies and score points. Taking out every enemy in the level with one snowball gets you a generous bonus and taking too long summons a pumpkin to harass you. Enemies drop potions that improve your movement speed, throwing range, and projectile power, but you’ll lose these perks if you die.

In Nightmare in the Dark, you throw fire at enemies in order to encase them in fireballs, which you can then use to defeat other enemies and score points. Taking out every enemy in the level with one fireball gets you a generous bonus and taking too long summons a pumpkin to harass you. Enemies drop potions that improve your movement speed, throwing range, and projectile power, but you’ll lose these perks if you die.

Wait… that sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? Yeah, this game is pretty blatant about its inspiration, but I’m not going to use that as some kind of gotcha or smoking gun to prove that it’s ~objectively bad~. If a formula works, there’s nothing wrong with adapting and tweaking it to suit a different world or environment. For example, Nightmare in the Dark makes a change to the formula in that you can freely carry your fireballs with you, whereas Snow Bros. makes you push the snowballs and ride them into foes. It’s only a single change, but it does have an effect on the way the game is played, making it slightly more accessible and easier to play than its inspiration. Snow Bros. is good fun and so Nightmare in the Dark is fun too for all the same reasons. And if you like games like this, isn’t that something to celebrate instead of deride? It’s impossible to create media in a complete vacuum, so rather than criticizing people for working with familiar ideas that bring them joy (I promise you’ll never see me complain about the use of “tropes” on this blog), I think it’s better to embrace the fact that these inspirations are powerful enough to bring people to want to make things in their image.

Aside from its horror themed aesthetic, this game’s most notable distinction is its boss battles, which are impressive visual highlights. Each boss attacks in significantly different ways and they all have excellent designs. The first boss is a take on Frankenstein’s monster and it attacks via stalagmites that it creates by smashing the ground. The second boss is a seriously massive skull on wheels that rams into you and is really hard to dodge as a result of its size. The third boss throws not one but two gargoyles at you, both of which you’ll have to avoid as you set up opportunities to attack. For the fourth stage, you’re put up against a knight clad in striking armor that opts to hop around and summon so many ghosts that it becomes hard to make a usable fireball because your shots keep hitting the wrong ghost. Your encounter against the wizard is the most challenging one of all due to his variety of attacks, including the likes of thunder strikes, various minions, and a transformation into a giant skeleton with which he tries to flatten you like a pancake. All of the bosses are defeated in the same way due to your limited moveset (you wait until the boss summons enemies, then use them to create fireballs), but each one offers enough spectacle to make the game worth playing just to see them.

In general, the presentation is Nightmare in the Dark‘s greatest strength. The environments consist of usually drab locations like graveyards and caves, but they’re bolstered by subtle visual touches that make them come alive. If you’re observant, you can spot the grass swaying in the wind, the light pouring onto the ground, and the fog slowly crawling into place. It has legitimate atmosphere that isn’t scary but is captivating in its own right, a fanciful presentation that fits the Aesop fable of a storyline. The handful of enemy types you encounter all shamble with a lack of grace that perfectly captures what it would be like to encounter undead ghouls and ghosts just minutes after they’ve been reanimated. They’re slow and rarely threatening, but you definitely wouldn’t want to smell or touch them either. Again, it’s not properly scary, but it all contributes to a bigger picture that captures the exact tone and vibe the graphic designers of Eleven were likely looking for. In contrast, the music, in line with what was popular at the time, consists of catchy jazz tunes backed by prominent bass and percussion that would fit right in with a Capcom fighting game. You’d expect something that tries to be foreboding or creepy, but instead it feels like the game just wants you to have a good time and share the joy with a second player if possible even if it doesn’t fit the horror theme at all. They were correct to assume that you would!

Nightmare in the Dark isn’t the kind of game that’s going to stick in peoples’ minds forever, so it’s really no surprise that you never hear about it. It’s brief, pretty easy to finish without using too many credits, doesn’t offer a ton of room for mastery, and hasn’t been ported to any consoles or Steam. It was a game that was too little and too late despite being a well designed tribute; the genre was already well on its way out by 2000 and a near carbon copy of one from 1990 sure wasn’t going to reignite interest among the public. Still, if you get a kick out of these kinds of games like I do or just love what games were doing musically in the late 90s/early 2000s, this one is well worth a playthrough, both as a way to examine a strange relic that was out of place even in its time and as a way to simply kick back and fight some cool bosses.

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